If you put six fundamentalist Baptists and six fundamentalist Mormons side by side, you might be hard pressed to determine which were which. Likewise, if you looked at the movies that each owned you’d also find much the same collection.
Although Feature Films for Families is not officially a Mormon company, they produce low-budget quasi-Christian movie fare that is very popular with fundamentalists of both Baptist and Mormon stripes. From the squeaky-clean shenanigans of the Butter Cream Gang to the deformed tenor’s dulcet tones in Rigoletto, these films have long been a staple of fundamentalist film collections.
Perhaps as some have suggested fundamentalists of different religions really do resemble each other more than they resemble the more moderate members of their own groups. At least they would seem to share a taste for the same type of saccharine cinema.
Rigoletto was a good movie. I don’t know much about “Feature Films for Families”, but it sounds like they’re just clean films made for families to enjoy (regardless of denomination).
We watched the movies as kids and I liked most of them. Some were hokey sure, but many were good, kid friendly stuff. The music in Rigoletto was great I thought.
Even as a kid though I wondered why nobody said anything about the Mormon connection or some of the non-biblical philosophy in some of the movies. As militant as our church and my parents were about separation (1st, 2nd & 3rd degree…personal AND ecclesiastical) I’m suprised we could watch those movies. =P
Full Disclosure: I still own the soundtrack to Rigoletto.
I don’t really have an issue with these types of things and nothing was ever said in my IFB mild church. 🙂 It’s hard to find films suitable for young children that are free of the “peer pressure” kind of story lines that abound.
I’m thinkin’ this one isn’t going to get a big response. Win some, lose some. :p
Wow, I’d completely forgotten about those, though after a quick perusal of their website (looks like they’re still around), I’ve seen at least a few of their movies.
My sister just had Rigoletto on tonight actually lol.
For a while there was a Mormon website that hosted some of their movies for free. I watched “Baptists at our Bar-b-que” about a Baptist and a Mormon who fall in love amongst others. It was a lot of fun lol.
FFfF is infamous for its telemarketing excesses.
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/feature-films-for-families-c122248.html
Word. I got called every morning, 8:30 AM for like a month or more. They are weasels!! I’m still wondering how to get a hold of Forrest Sandusky Baker III, their founder. If you can, call them and try to get as high up as possible (preferably past the supervisor). Please do this and tell me about your experience.
Ooh, I love these movies. Split Infinity was probably my favorite!
The movies are decent, but Darrell makes a good point about the tendency of each religious group to “grow” its own “branch” of extreme fundamentalism and for those branches to share some similar characteristics. It seems to me that IFB is its own ugly, straight and rigid tree, with bark too rock-hard to sprout branches. What is it about man that he turns away from God’s narrow way, only to choose another narrow way of his own making?
Woah! I remember watching Rigoletto!! I really liked the music…
i grew up in a semi-fundy church (is there such thing?). my youth group saw multiplicity with michael keaton, like, 6 times.
The only one I ever watched was Split Infinity. There was a girl who wanted to make money, and that was bad. So she gets hit on the head or something, travels back in time, and meets her grandfather as a teen. He’s not interested in money, so he’s good. But she keeps trying to teach him how to start various small businesses. When he listens, he does fairly well, but making money is still bad. She tells him which stocks to invest in because she already knows these companies will be wildly successful in the future. He won’t listen, because he thinks she’s “mental” and he doesn’t care about money anyway, so that’s good. Then she gets hit on the head again, and goes back to her own time, where she finds he followed her advice and got fabulously wealthy, which is bad? Good? Who knows? But he gave most of his money to build a hospital and named it after her, so that’s good. A strongly moralistic tale with a very confusing moral! ❓
People wanted me to watch the other movies, but when I asked what was interesting about them, they couldn’t tell me.
I watched Rigoletto over and over back in the day….lol
I’ve seen a bunch of these, and I’m a true IFBer. I found out about the Mormon connection to FFF (sorry, the other one) after I saw all of them. At least I got them from the library and Goodwill stores so the Mormons didn’t get my money!!!
Rigoletto was great, and I too have the soundtrack! Several years ago, when I was working at an after school program at a fundy grade school, I saw the movie on the library shelf and suggested to the other teacher that we let the kids watch it (it was “video day”). But apparently it wasn’t clean enough for her because she freaked out and turned it off when one of the characters said “dern”. I’m glad I resisted to urge to laugh in her face!:lol:
I am an Episcopalian, and not a fundamentalist by any stretch. But I have loved every film I ordered from this company. And I have many wonderful, amazing, brilliant LDS friends. I am frankly tired of hearing this group bashed. What is your point in doing this?
Um…they’re a cult…?